Consumers oil hair both pre wash and post wash. Pre wash oiling is done as it is believed that oils nourish hair and protect it during the wash process. Post wash oiling is done for manageability and styling. The oiling habit is widely practised by around 800 million people across the Central Asia and Middle East region.
Coconut oil is by far the most common oil used in the Central Asia and Middle East region for hair care. It offers a high level of conditioning benefits, but with the drawback of greasy feel.
EP 1289479 discloses hair oils which incorporate a specific blend of oil types (glyceride fatty esters and hydrocarbon oils) and which can deliver an equivalent level of conditioning benefits to coconut oil, but with superior sensory properties, in particular less greasy feel.
The oil should be easily applied or spread onto the hair by brush or fingers to provide uniform coverage of the oil throughout the hair. However, once applied it should not drip or run off the hair. It would be desirable to incorporate a rheology modifier such as a gelling agent into the oil in order to improve these properties, but a problem is that the incorporation of gelling agent into the oil at a sufficient level to give the desired product rheology can result in sensory negatives such as a sticky, greasy feel.
The present inventors have found that this problem can be solved if the gelling agent is incorporated into a water-in-oil microemulsion formed with a particular type of nonionic emulsifier. The gel so obtained exhibits enhanced viscosity and shear-thinning properties, yet without sensory negatives such as a sticky, greasy feel. Advantageously, it also exhibits enhanced compatibility with hair benefit agents such as hair styling agents and hair conditioning agents (which are normally incompatible with oils).